


On Sunset

by Em_Jaye



Series: The Long Way Around [17]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Assassination Attempt(s), Bisexual Steve Rogers, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon Fix-It, Slow Burn, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Time Travel, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-10-28 09:02:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20775974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em_Jaye/pseuds/Em_Jaye
Summary: Woody Allen once said, 'If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans." With that in mind, Darcy had to wonder if there was anyone who could make God laugh quite like Steve Rogers.January 1973: Salvage Mission





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know this took a long time. I'm sorry. I got distracted by Promptkin Spice (go read my contribution! Complete Abandon (or not at all)!) and then I had to do some family stuff. And then I got SO FREAKING SICK I couldn't work or stay away for more than 2 hours at a time.
> 
> So this is late. I hope it's okay. I love you guys.

**_Date_**_: 01.19.73_  
**Target**: Henry Baxtor – Senator, fifth district, New York, US  
**Directive**: Eliminate. Long range. No witnesses.  
**Extraction**: 01.21.73 / 34°04'50.0"N 118°24'54.5"W

**_Mission report_**_: Target eliminated 01.20.73. 2100. _  
Dragunov with telescopic sight—assembled on-sight. 7.62×54mmR.   
34°04'50.4"N 118°24'51.8"W  
No witnesses.

Steve could recite the debrief for this mission in his sleep. It had been one of the first he’d memorized from Natasha’s data dump. It was the slimmest of mission reports—one of the few that Nat had confirmed he’d written himself. He had no handler on-sight for Senator Baxtor and in debrief of solo missions, the Winter Soldier had been notoriously laconic.

The notes he’d rewritten from memory were upstairs in his room along with his maps of the area, a layout of the hotel he’d sketched out after walking around that afternoon, noting possible points of ingress, trying to identify sight-lines where someone might be able to fire a long-range rifle.

The senator had been shot directly above his right eyebrow—a single shot to the kill-zone—while in the pool. His body had floated for a few hours before being discovered by a member of the staff, destroying the LAPD’s ability to determine where his shooter had been stationed. There had been no arrests—no suspects. As far as Steve knew, Baxtor’s assassination was still an open case in 2023.

But for right now, he was very much alive, seated in the restaurant of the Beverly Hills Hotel, in one of its circular booths in the back. Surrounded by starry-eyed young women, aides in ties and gray suits, and one security guard sitting two tables away.

From where he’d parked himself in the middle of the bar, Steve could tell that Baxtor was the kind of man who’d been born to run for public office. Tall and heavy-set in his mid-fifties with straight, white teeth, a memorably firm handshake, and a voice that could fill a room without any help from a microphone.

Steve scanned the room carefully, eyeing the large vents near the ceiling—large enough for someone to crawl through if they had enough determination. Although, he told himself, it was likely that Bucky was somewhere even closer—lurking undetected in a shadow, waiting for the right moment to complete his mission.

He closed his eyes and tightened his hand around the cold, sweating glass in his hand. He didn’t want to think about what was going through Bucky’s brain right now. What had been stripped away and wiped from the last time he’d been allowed to see the sun and breathe fresh air. Was it just strategy? Tactical assertion? Narrowly focused on ending the life of the man across the room? Did he even consider his target a man? Or just a mission to complete; a check to mark on a to-do list.

“Business or pleasure?”

Steve looked up, surprised to find the bartender studying him with interest, a half-smile playing on her lips. “Sorry?”

“Are you in L.A. for business or pleasure?” she repeated, a little slower. She was pretty, he decided. Olive skin and long black hair; dark eyes and long pink nails that she drummed absently on the bar, awaiting his response.

“Oh, uh,” Steve shook his head. “Business. I think.”

“Business you think,” she repeated slowly, her smile spreading a little wider. “Not sure?”

“I’m uh,” he cleared his throat. “I’m just in town to meet with someone.” Absently, he toyed with the braided strands of leather he wore around his wrist. His thumb and forefinger rolled the little silver charm and drew a small smile from him when he remembered the insistence with which Darcy had wrapped it around his wrist before he left.

_Let me have my superstitions, Steve,_ she’d said seriously, not looking at him while she double knotted the bracelet she usually wore. _You can’t go almost get killed without a good luck charm. That’s just madness. _

“Well, while you’re here, you might as well see the sights and get your fill of Tinsletown before you have to go back to…” the bartender looked up from where she’d been idly drying the inside of a whiskey glass.

“Oakland,” Steve supplied once he realized she was still talking to him.

“Right on,” she nodded. “I hung around there for a while. You ever been here before?”

He nodded. “Yeah. It’s been a few years.” Thirty, according to the calendar. “But it’s pretty much the same.”

“I’m Lisa, by the way,” she set down her glass and towel and extended a hand.

“Joe,” he lied, remembering the name under which he’d booked his room while they shook.

Another man sat down at the far end of the bar and motioned for her attention. “Okay, Joe from Oakland,” Lisa smiled and tucked a strand of glossy black hair behind her ear. “If you need a recommendation for something fun to do… or if you decide you have time for some pleasure on this business trip,” she gave him a quick once-over with a sparkle in her brown eyes, “you know where to find me.”

Steve offered her a polite smile and suddenly wished Darcy was there. Not _there, _in Los Angeles, on this dangerous mission with him. But _there_ at that moment, sitting next to him at the bar. Because while she’d probably be offering to wander off so Lisa could keep coming onto him, she wouldn’t actually leave. She’d sit next to him and talk to him and keep his thoughts from getting too dark. And while she was sitting there, Lisa—or any other woman that he didn’t have the time or brain-space for—wouldn’t invite him to find her to mix business with pleasure. And he wouldn’t be sitting there, uncomfortable, wondering if he shouldn’t just get up and go back to his room and continue his recon.

Across the room, Senator Baxtor ended his story with a punchline and the table exploded with laughter. Steve glanced over, startled from his own thoughts and watched the man in question motion to a server around a loud, choking laugh. He felt his stomach twist uncomfortably. Harry Baxtor had no idea that he had less than 48 hours to live; that all he hoped or planned to accomplish would go undone, and anything he might have become would be extinguished quicker than the blink of an eye.

He looked away and accidentally made eye contact with Lisa, who shot him a wink while she poured a shot of vodka over a tumbler of crushed ice cubes. Steve looked back down at what remained of his drink; he swirled the amber liquid around what remained of the melted ice before he tossed it back and let it burn his throat all the way down. He tossed his cash on the bar and gave Lisa an obligatory nod before he stood and started for the door.

His head was down, shuffling his wallet into one pocket while he dug for his room key. He didn’t notice the man at the end of the bar take his vodka and stand up just as Steve was walking past. He wouldn’t have noticed him at all if he hadn’t crashed right into him. “Whoa,” the man said and everything inside of Steve froze. “Sorry man, didn’t see you there.”

He looked up and felt all the breath sucked from his lungs at once. All his planning, all his preparation, all the reminders that he’d drilled into his own head about what needed to happen on this mission evaporated. “Bucky?”

He’d been expecting the Winter Solider. The brainwashed, silent, killing machine. Hydra’s favorite plaything. Armed to the teeth, muzzled, every atom a weapon.

Not this.

Not a man in a floral-patterned shirt and brown three-piece suit. Clean shaven and with clean hair. A pack of cigarettes in his front pocket. An easy half-smile on his lips.

Not threatening.

Not even memorable.

And without a trace of recognition in his eyes.

The man he’d crashed into—_Bucky, _he told himself, _it’s Bucky—_only offered a confused smile, one Steve had seen so many times he could draw it from memory. “Sorry,” he repeated—_he sounds exactly the same_—and shook his head. His hair was longer; it just brushed his shoulders and a piece fell into his eyes. He pushed it away with his left hand. He was wearing a brown leather glove. “You must be thinking of someone else.”

He had to move, he ordered himself. This was not the place for this confrontation. He couldn’t very well bash Bucky over the head and drag him out in front of all these people. Steve opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He throat had run dry. His chest felt like someone had reached inside and closed five, icy metal fingers around his heart and begun to squeeze.

“Everything okay here?” Lisa’s voice shattered the moment in which they’d been frozen. Steve managed to glance over to find her looking between them, concerned.

“Yeah,” he choked on the word as Bucky stepped carefully around him. “Sorry.”

Bucky’s gloved hand swatted him lightly, almost carelessly, as he started to walk away. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, not even looking back as he headed for the door. In the time it took for Steve to remember how to breathe, how to move, how to _think, _Bucky had drained his vodka in a single gulp and set the glass on the valet stand. He had time to pause in the lobby and light a cigarette before he pushed open the glass doors and disappeared into the crowd on Sunset Boulevard like a drop in the ocean.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all the wonderful comments on part 1! Hope you like the rest!

“You can’t really be beating yourself up about this,” Darcy was saying as Steve idly swished the phone cord back and forth against the patterned carpet. He hadn’t meant to tell her what had happened in the restaurant—he’d been planning on asking her a few questions and letting her talk long enough to help him clear his mind and get him to refocus. Dwelling on how he’d frozen and blown any chance at maintaining an element of surprise wasn’t going to help him later. But she’d done that thing she did—where he’d said five words and she’d asked him what was wrong. “Well,” she went on when he didn’t respond, “I mean, it’s _you._ And beating yourself up is like, your third favorite hobby, so it’s not that I’m genuinely surprised.”

He frowned at the phone. “What do you think are my first two?”

“If I had to guess?” she said, sounding like she’d thought about this. “I’d say…fighting fascism and…jogging?”

“I don’t jog.”

“Fine,” she huffed. “Fighting fascism and running. Really fast running.” Steve shrugged—accurate enough—as Darcy continued. “And you’re dodging my initial point.”

“Why shouldn’t I beat myself up about this?” he asked. “I’ve been thinking about doing this for three years and when the time came to actually act on everything I’ve been planning to do, I froze. I never freeze.”

Darcy was quiet for a moment before she cleared her throat. “Would you like a dose of boundless optimism or a distraction? I can’t tell if I’m not looking at your face.”

“I don’t care,” he muttered as he swiped a hand over his face and dropped down to sit on the edge of his bed. “Neither is really going to help right now.”

“Okay, well,” she paused. “I’m ignoring that. My boundless optimism says that you’re overthinking this. If Bucky really didn’t recognize you then he has no reason to think you’re any kind of threat and he’s probably already forgotten you—which, I realize that’s hard to hear,” she added hurriedly before Steve even had time to acknowledge the way the words and their reality twisted like a shard of glass in his chest. “I’m not making light of that. But it’s also a good thing for you. It means you might not have totally blown it.”

He sighed. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

Another pause. “I just thought of another optimistic thing—but you might not like it because it implies you fucked up.”

“Go for it.”

“In the event Bucky did recognize you—somehow, some way, and I’m not saying that’s likely at _all_—there’s a chance you threw him off his game and you might have a chance to keep that senator from dying this weekend.”

Steve rubbed his eyes with one hand. “He didn’t look thrown off his game.”

“How _did _he look?”

The question took him by surprise. “He looked—um—” he exhaled. “Good, I guess? He looked…y’know, healthy and normal and like…” _Like _my _Bucky, _he thought. The words stayed on his tongue. Salty and familiar and something he’d had to choke back more than once.

“Still a total babe, huh?”

Despite his mood, he smiled. “More or less.”

That’s what had hurt the most. When he’d encountered the Winter Soldier in 2014, it had been shock that made him freeze. He had been expecting to see literally anyone else under that mask—anyone but his best friend who’d been dead for seventy years. And with the Winter Soldier, the differences had been so stark that he couldn’t believe it at first. It wasn’t Bucky he was fighting. It was a weapon—metal and grit and deadly accuracy. Not Bucky. Bucky was buried in there somewhere, unable to stop what was happening, but it wasn’t _him. _Bucky could never look so cold. So dead behind his eyes.

But the man downstairs…

_That _was Bucky. Tall and broad and confident in the way he carried himself. An easy smile and quick to forgive a little mishap like being mistaken for someone else. If his hair had been shorter, and if he’d been in uniform, he would have looked exactly like he had in ‘44. To hear _that _Bucky say he didn’t know him—and to be able to see it in his eyes that he really believed that…

Steve hadn’t been prepared for how badly that would shake him.

“You can still get him back, Steve,” Darcy said softly after what felt like a long silence had passed between them.

He was grateful she wasn’t there then. He didn’t want to have to hide the way her words stung his eyes and twisted those shards of glass deeper into his heart. Instead, he coughed and cleared his throat. “What was the distraction?”

“Oh,” she accepted his change of topic without complaint. “Well, two things, I guess. I got roped into this volunteer training for the hospital with Tangie—it’s kind of like patient advocacy? I think? The first meeting was tonight and that was mostly paperwork so I don’t know the whole story yet, but I think I might like it.”

He smiled again. “You’d be great at that,” he said sincerely. “And the second thing?”

“I went to the park after work and watched a dog clothesline a three-year-old with his leash.”

Steve couldn’t help but snort at the mental picture she’d just painted. “You didn’t laugh, did you?”

“No, I howled,” Darcy corrected around another laugh. “This kid wiped out _so hard_ and then he pulled the dog down trying to get up and they were both rolling in the mud….Oh my God, it was hilarious. You should’ve been there.”

“Sounds way better than my afternoon,” he admitted, still smiling.

“If I hang up, are you going to be okay?” she asked, once her giggles had subsided.

“Yeah,” he said immediately. “Of course. Why?” he asked. “Gotta hot date you need to get ready for?”

“Not exactly,” she said dryly. “I have to open in the morning and I’m pretty wiped. But I’ll stay up if you want to keep talking.”

“I’m fine, Darcy,” he said quietly. “But thanks—you should go to bed if you’re tired.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “You’re right.”

“I’ll talk to you later.” He didn’t want to hang up the phone, he realized. He wanted to keep talking to her, keep listening to her talk about her day, anything to keep him from the loneliness that was waiting as soon as they disconnected.

“Steve?”

He sat up a little straighter at the shift in Darcy’s tone. Uncharacteristically uncertain. If he didn’t know better, he’d say she sounded shy. “Yeah?”

“I—um.” She stopped.

Steve waited.

The line went quiet for so long he thought the call had dropped. “Darcy?” he asked tentatively. “You there?”

“I just want you to be careful,” she said, ignoring his question. Her words were rushed, like she’d been daring herself to say them. Or like she’d been daring herself to say something else. “I…I know he looks like your Bucky. And I know that…that eventually he’ll come back—he’ll be the person you remember but.” She coughed again and Steve could almost hear her fidgeting. “But right now, he’s not. Okay? Don’t forget that.”

“I won’t,” he said, almost certain he meant it. He told himself he could tell the difference between the Bucky he knew and the killer wearing his face. His eyes darted to his duffel bag and the handgun he’d slipped inside before he left Oakland. Just a 9mm, loaded at the pawn shop where he purchased it. Paid for in cash. Relatively untraceable. He told himself it was a last resort—but that he’d be able to use it if he had to.

He almost believed that.

“Just…” she stopped again. “Just come back, okay? Preferably in one piece.”

His gut unclenched. “One piece,” he promised before he smiled at the phone again. “You got it. Besides, I’m untouchable with this good luck charm you made me wear, remember?” He held the receiver between his ear and his shoulder to run his fingers over the braided leather again.

She laughed lightly—it wasn’t a real laugh. “Right. Just bring it back without any bloodstains, okay?”

“Deal.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” she said and was gone before he could wish her a good night. Steve hung up the phone and set it back down on the table beside his bed. He forced his mind back on track, telling himself he’d wonder what Darcy had really wanted to say later. For now, he had Henry Baxtor’s life to possibly save and a KGB operative to apprehend while they were both hiding in plain sight.

Just a typical Friday night.

He picked up his map of the hotel and its surrounding blocks. Baxtor had been shot while in the pool, the reports had said. The bullet had entered above his eyebrow and blown out the back of his skull, making anything more than a guess on trajectory impossible. The bullet was untraceable. A perfect murder.

Steve got up and studied his drawings again. The sketch he’d done of the pool was half from memory and half from what he’d observed briefly from outside before he’d checked in. There had been too many people when he’d arrived that afternoon. No way to examine all possible points of entry without looking suspicious. No matter what Natasha had tried to drill into his head, Steve knew he was still mostly a blunt instrument when it came to espionage on his own.

Mind made up, he grabbed his room key and made his way to the pool. The sign told him it would be closed at eleven, but the thirty minutes that afforded him was more than enough. To his relief, the entire area was empty, the only movement being the sway of the strings of lights and the palm trees in the breeze and the gentle lap of water inside the filters. In darker lighting, all the pale pink wasn’t quite so gaudy. He tilted his head to one side, trying to remember how the senator had been found. He walked slowly around the edge of the water, scanning the immediate area for any place a gunman could hide. 

It only took a minute. The pool was a terrible place to target someone. Palm trees ringed the patio and what wasn’t concealed by trees was obstructed by stripe-tented cabanas and the narrow spindles of a wrought-iron privacy fence. Steve frowned and considered the top of the wall surrounding the pool. Had he perched there? Hid in a cabana? Stood on the other side of the fence and shot through the bars? How had no one seen him?

His eyes swept the neighboring structures, but he found no rooftops or balconies from which a shooter could take aim. Feeling even more disheartened, Steve spun slowly, one last time. That’s when he saw it. At least a full block away. A tall, slim building, five stories up from his current position. A row of windows near the top floor. Most dark. All closed.

A whisper of movement—so quick he almost missed it—drew his eye swiftly to the third window from the right. Steve’s blood ran cold.

It was an impossible shot. The distance, the wind, the broad expanse of swaying palm branches. Any other marksman in the world would call it. Find another approach.

But Bucky had been the best sniper he’d ever seen long before Hydra got their hands on him.

With every hair on the back of his neck standing on end, Steve backed away, toward the door that had brought him outside. He kept his eyes on that window until he was safely inside.

When he got back to his room, he locked and bolted the door. He took his gun from his bag and sat down slowly; back against the wall, eyes on the door.

He didn’t know what he was expecting. Only that there was no doubt in his mind that Bucky had been in that window, watching him the whole time.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all my kittens who are trying to figure out what kind of implications Steve and Darcy are having on future events/timelines. I can tell which school of thought on which I'm basing this fic in one of these author's notes OR you can wait for and see. I'm happy either way.
> 
> I hope you like this last piece; it was muy dificile to write.

Steve stared up at the brick building as the shadows began to slowly lengthen along the sidewalk. At the end of the block street, if he squinted in the fading sunlight, he could see the orange and golden light bouncing off the ocean. The breeze was warm, and the air smelled like saltwater. This would be a beautiful afternoon if he was there for another reason.

Any reason other than what unglued his feet from the sidewalk and forced him ahead. Through the door. To the stairwell. Up the first flight of stairs. If he was right, Bucky would already be there. He’d have set up his perch the night before and would be laying in wait for Baxtor to go for a swim. He likely wouldn’t have left since last night—moving as little as possible and letting the clock run out on the senator’s life.

If he was wrong, he was walking into an empty room. And both he and Senator Baxtor would be fucked and out of time.

He’d found Baxtor’s security detail in the hotel restaurant again that morning. He’d let his suit jacket hang over the back of his chair and with his sleeves rolled up, Steve had caught a glimpse of a US Army tattoo on his forearm. It only took a nod of recognition and a ‘Where’d you serve?’ to get himself invited to the seat beside him. Steve bought him a cup of coffee and did his best at small talk until the other man had mentioned what he did for a living.

“A senator,” Steve had repeated, stirring sugar into his own coffee. “Really? They put just one guy on that?”

His new friend, Rick, had shrugged. “He’s not that big of a deal,” he admitted in a low voice. “Nobody gives a shit what he’s doing while he’s out here. I’m really just babysitting—making sure he doesn’t do anything too stupid that could get back to his wife.”

He’d forced a laugh—not wanting to think about Baxtor’s wife back in New York, waiting for him to come home—and raised his coffee cup. “Here’s hoping you don’t need any backup for that.”

Backup. He reached the fourth flight of stairs. Didn’t have any of that. He’d considered calling in a tip to the LAPD but the memory of how Bucky had torn through the CIA and Interpol agents like they were made of paper had given him pause. The more people he got involved with trying to get Bucky back, the more lives he was risking.

And if he was being honest with himself, he couldn’t say for certain that the LAPD could be trusted. It could have just been poor police work and bad luck that no one had ever solved Baxtor’s murder. But it just as easily could have been that someone high up knew exactly who had killed him and knew how to ensure it would never be found out.

Hydra had its tentacles in everything. For all he knew, Rick was Hydra too and had been tasked with making sure Baxtor was in the right place at the right time for Bucky to take his shot.

He didn’t know what this building had once been used for, but it was abandoned now. Slotted for demolition in the spring, according to the sign posted on the front door.

All of the rooms in the south hallway of the fifth floor were empty; most had windows painted shut. Most, but not all. The third from the right had been forced open. Chips from a fractured paint seal littered the floor. Steve stopped outside the door; his heart hammered in his throat. The set-up was simple: a long range sniper rifle rested against a perch built with sandbags and cardboard boxes. There was no food or water, making him wonder how long Bucky had been waiting. How long could he go without basic rations?

He took one step into the room, all senses on high-alert. No sniper worth his salt would leave a post once he’d set up. And not this close to the deadline for completing his mission. Steve’s focus narrowed—blocking out everything except what he could see, hear, smell—as he took another step toward the window. No shadows moved along the walls. No sounds of breathing or rustle of clothing. No trace of anyone else there.

He made it three more steps—just as close to the rifle and the window as he was to his only exit—before he heard it. The barely audible squeak of a floorboard. It was the only warning he received before a flash of silver rocketed toward his right eye.

Steve pivoted to the right and blocked Bucky’s first blow with his forearm, leaving his chest open for the knee his attacker drove into his sternum. It knocked the wind out of him and cut him in half but put him in position to charge forward and plant his shoulder in Bucky’s stomach, knocking him off his feet. Bucky hit the ground hard and was back up almost immediately.

“I don’t want to fight you,” Steve huffed as his breath returned. “But I can’t let you do this.”

Bucky said nothing as he advanced again. Steve remembered the fear he’d felt the first time they had fought hand-to-hand. It was the first time since receiving the serum that someone had posed a real threat. The first time he thought he might lose.

This was no different. Bucky was every bit as powerful, as fast, as deadly and motivated as he’d been in 2014. His face didn’t change; his eyes offered no spark of recognition while he delivered blow after blow for Steve to block and return. His determination was palpable. No chance he would let anything deter him from completing his mission. Steve knew he wasn’t someone this Bucky could remember loving. He wasn’t his best friend or someone he recognized. He wasn’t even an adversary. He was only something that had tried to come between a soldier and his mission.

“Bucky, please.” It was pointless, but Steve had to keep talking. Had to keep trying. “You don’t want to do this.” He felt the skin on his knuckles tear when Bucky blocked a punch with his left hand. “You know me.”

“No,” Bucky shoved back the fist he’d intercepted and slammed Steve’s elbow into the wall with enough force to dislocate a shoulder, “I don’t.”

“Yes you do,” Steve huffed before he pushed himself off the wall with a kick to his opponent’s solar plexus. “You just don’t remember. You’d never hurt me.”

As if to prove him wrong, Bucky charged again, putting every ounce of muscle and force he possessed behind the fist that connected with Steve’s throat. It knocked him off his feet and landed him hard on his back. Spots appeared in front of his eyes when his head bounced off the floor. Steve forced himself to his side, slower than he would have liked, and coughed up a mouthful of blood before he pushed himself all the way up. “I can help you,” he said, breathing with difficulty around at least two broken ribs. “You don’t have to go back—”

Bucky charged again; Steve was able to block and return a flurry of intended blows before he blinked and Bucky grabbed him by the throat. Metal fingers closed around his windpipe and squeezed. Bucky’s right fist slammed into Steve’s face.

Once.

Twice.

His vision started to darken as he struggled to breathe, to fight to free himself from Bucky’s grip.

Three times. Bucky slammed him back against the nearest wall again. “Why don’t you stay down?” he growled, grinding the words between his clenched teeth.

Steve couldn’t breathe. He could barely see. If Bucky didn’t let him go, he was going to die. “Come on Buck,” he rasped, forcing a smile with the little strength he had left. “You know I can’t do that.”

Bucky had pulled his fist back again to deliver another blow. It stopped as a strange look crossed his face. The fingers of his left hand relaxed just enough that Steve could draw another breath. “What did you—”

They stared at each other just long enough for Steve to hope. For him to believe that he’d said the right thing—that he had pulled at just the right thread to get through to the Bucky buried beneath this monster.

Just one moment before that fist tightened again and crashed into Steve’s face and everything went dark.

_His chest shuddered when he drew in a breath and a splatter of blood on the pavement accompanied his next cough. Steve swiped his tongue along the inside of his mouth. No teeth loose. The blood was mostly from his split lip. He winced as he wiped a hand across his face, realizing too late that he’d just managed to smear more blood from the skin that had ripped open on his palm when he’d hit the ground the first time._

_“It’s not your sketching hand, is it?” Bucky asked, sitting right down on the damp, dirty ground of the alley next to Steve. He crossed his legs and dropped the paper bag from the drug store into his lap._

_Steve shook his head and glanced down at his bloodied knuckles. “Nah,” he gingerly clenched and unclenched his right hand. “I’ll be fine.”_

_“Yeah, I can tell,” Bucky laughed lightly as he reached into his school bag and removed a heavy green thermos. “You really showed that guy, Stevo,” he shook his head and poured water over the gash on Steve’s left palm. “Busting his knuckles up with your face like that.”_

_Steve gave a little smile as he shrugged. “He left that girl alone, didn’t he?”_

_“I guess he did,” Bucky relented, shaking his head while he carefully wound gauze around Steve’s hand. There was a moment’s pause, after he’d knotted the gauze to keep it in place until they got back to Steve’s apartment, where Bucky’s fingers curled around his. His thumb swiped lightly over the white bandage and Steve found himself wishing it wasn’t there. He wanted to feel that touch against his own skin. Bucky looked up as a lock of dark hair dropped across his forehead. “Why don’t you just stay down?”_

_Despite the way his heart was racing and how badly he wished he could reach out and push Bucky’s hair back from his face, let his fingers drift over his ear, Steve managed to smile again. “C’mon, Buck,” he said softly. “You know I can’t do that.”_

_“Yeah,” Bucky’s eyes dropped to their hands and Steve saw his throat bob with a hard swallow. “I know.”_

Steve’s eyes opened slowly, the pain in his head and chest enough to make him groan with the effort. The room was dark, shadows cast by streetlights hanging long along the walls. He knew without moving that he was alone. He could practically taste the silence. Heavy and chalky.

He sat up with some effort. Moving his head cancelled the silence with an unpleasant ringing in his ears. Likely from when Bucky had slammed his skull against the wall. Over and over again. Carefully, he got to his feet and surveyed the room.

Empty.

No gun. No boxes or sandbags. No evidence of their fight. No sign that anyone else had even been in the room. He’d woken up with the weight of his failure pressing into his chest, restricting his breath even more than the broken ribs. Still, he had to be sure. He ambled over to the window and squinted through the dark.

His heart sank lower and he dropped his head with a heavy sigh. The water in the pool had run red with Baxtor’s blood. Red and blue police lights bounced over the street and Steve backed away slowly from the window.

Baxtor was dead.

Bucky was gone.

This had been for nothing.

He made it down two flights of stairs before he stopped and sat down. He put his head in his hands.

The tears stung the open cuts beneath his eyes. One more thing Steve was powerless to stop.

***

He took his time the next day. It was hard to wake up and go through the motions he needed to get moving and get on the road. Even though he’d started to heal as soon as the fight was over, it had been a long time since Steve’s body had taken such a beating.

It was almost eleven by the time he turned his key in the door. He’d heard the rise and fall of the TV from the doorway and looked from the game show audience to the couch where Darcy had fallen asleep with the lamp still on. He set his bag down quietly and crossed to turn off the TV before he crouched between the couch and coffee table.

Darcy had fallen asleep with her glasses on, they sat askew on the bridge of her nose, a paperback had slipped to the floor and she was curled into a ball beneath the blanket Junie had knit for her last Christmas. Steve watched her breathing deeply, her lips parted, a tiny line between her eyebrows and let the realization hit him that he’d missed her, missed their apartment, missed this warmth and familiarity. He swallowed back what he could and reached out to rest his hand on her shoulder.

Her brow furrowed first, her lips pursed into a brief frown before her eyes fluttered open slowly and he watched her initial confusion fade to recognition before she offered him a soft smile. “You’re home.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

Home. He didn’t know when he’d started thinking of this place as home, but the word felt right when she said it. It fit with what he’d missed while he’d been away.

Darcy’s smile faded as she straightened her glasses and her eyes traveled over his face, logging all the bruises and cuts. She pursed her lips again and pulled herself upright. The blanket slipped from her shoulder and Steve waited for her to ask what happened, but she didn’t. She just shifted to pull her feet beneath her and patted the vacant spot beside her.

Wordlessly, Steve got up and sat down to her right. They stared at the black screen of the TV for a handful of loud ticks of the kitchen clock before she cleared her throat lightly. “Distraction?”

He sighed and glanced over to find her looking at him with a sad, sympathetic smile. “Yes, please.”

Darcy returned her gaze to the front of the room. “Think about the logistics of sending a dick pic in 1973.”

Wondering, not for the first time, what exactly the inside of Darcy’s brain looked like, Steve did as she asked. “Polaroids?”

“No,” she answered quickly. “Regular film only.”

With everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, he shouldn’t have found anything funny. Let alone this. It hurt his chest, but he couldn’t help but huff out half a laugh. “What made you think about this?”

She shrugged. “I was updating my list of pros the other night. I added ‘no longer at risk for being sent unsolicited dick pics’ and it made me think of how much dedication it would take to send one now.”

He glanced over and raised an eyebrow. “Dedication, huh?”

She met his eyes and grinned. “You’d have to first take the photo—presumably more than one—”

“Naturally,” he agreed. “Gotta have options.”

“Then get the film developed…”

He chuckled again. “And that’s assuming you were towards the end of the roll of film.”

“Oh shit,” Darcy shifted to face him. “I didn’t even think about that. So yeah, either you’d have to plan it so you shot the last of the roll with your artistic endeavors—” Steve snorted and shook his head. “Or have a plan to use up the rest of the film before the intended recipient loses interest.”

“There’s nothing to say you couldn’t devote an entire roll to this plan, though,” Steve added, thoughtfully.

Darcy let out a loud cackle. “Can you imagine being the tech who has to develop that roll? I mean, you know they’re gonna make copies anyway—”

“They don’t make copies,” he argued lightly.

“Yes, they _do_,” she insisted. “Which brings me to the next step, waiting what, like, two weeks? To get this film developed. Then send it out. In the _mail_—”

“Jesus,” Steve laughed. “Getting that in the mail? Do you think there’s a card to accompany it? Or just…one photo in an envelope? Because that seems kind of threatening…”

“It’s always threatening!” she exclaimed, still laughing. “And what would the _card_ say?!”

It wasn’t that funny. But between the infectious nature of Darcy’s laughter and the overwhelming relief that he’d made it home—that for whatever reason, Bucky had left him alive—Steve had to laugh too.

He laughed despite his battered ribs until he had tears in his eyes again. These tears didn’t sting quite so much.

***

January 25, 1973

Moscow, Russia 

“Report,” Chairman Andropov demanded. “Did you find him?”

“Yes, Chairman,” Agent Kalugin replied, keeping his eyes downcast as his superior officer approached. “He missed his extraction point.”

“He doesn’t miss his extractions,” Andropov stated without room for argument.

“I understand, Chairman,” the younger agent said quietly. “We were able to locate him. He’s being prepped to return to the cryo chamber right now.” He’d been told that Andropov would not accept that the Winter Soldier had stepped out of line. He had been instructed to amend the record to erase the fact that he had missed his extraction--that Kalugin had to comb the streets of Los Angeles for two days in a panic that he’d lost the KGB’s best asset. There would be no official record that he’d found him in a canyon near the initial extraction point—dehydrated and confused, wandering aimlessly, muttering about Brooklyn and troublemakers and a name Kalugin couldn’t understand for the way it died on the Soldier’s lips every time he tried to speak it.

“Make sure they wipe him again,” Andropov said gruffly. “And no more solo missions for a while. He gets a handler like the others until I say otherwise.”

“Yes, Chairman.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! Things that are way hard for me to write no matter how many times I do it:
> 
> -action of any kind  
-fistfights in particular  
-Steve NOT being able to give 100% because of his feelings in said fistfight 
> 
> Also, an important note before I leave you: if you've come to the comments to debate the bisexuality of Steven Grant Rogers in my universe or to imply that his love for Bucky somehow cheapens or diminishes his love for Darcy, I'm afraid you're going to have a bad time. 
> 
> Also, (spoiler alert) ya girl don't do love triangles, so if you're worried that's somehow on the horizon, don't be. I got you, fam.
> 
> Allllll that being said, please be kind. You always are, but sometimes I worry and I've had a weird, exhausting few weeks. 
> 
> Thanks kittens. I love you.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, I don't know guns. This is all based on Wikipedia.  
\--  
Come play with me on tumblr: @idontgettechnology and join me at ishipitpod.com for weekly podcast on fandom and fanfic by yours truly.
> 
> *kisses*


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